


For her own

by lumosatnight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (describing characters by their hair), Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, Death, F/M, Family, Gen, Hairy Potter, LGBTQ characters if you squint, References to Depression, Sister Dynamics, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, The Tale of the Three Brothers (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29420172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lumosatnight/pseuds/lumosatnight
Summary: Here she took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in her hand.Here Andromeda takes from her left pocket an unassuming stone, and turns it over in her hand.It looks like the moon, she thinks. The round stone softly glows in the limited light, various colours attempting and failing to reveal themselves on its smooth surface. This one small white stone, meticulously concealed on her person since yesterday evening, will wreak havoc on her relatively calm life and leave irreversible consequences.
Relationships: Andromeda Black Tonks/Ted Tonks, Bellatrix Black Lestrange/Rodolphus Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A _mostly_ canon and epilogue compliant story focusing on the three Black sisters as they grow up together, form relationships, and eventually separate to follow their own paths. Frequently draws parallels to “The Tale of the Three Brothers.”
> 
> This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction! I welcome constructive criticism, but I’m actually a smol bean who’s very fragile, so please be gentle with me.
> 
> (Will be updating weekly)

**_The Tale of the Three Sisters_ **

~~~

_There were once three sisters who were traveling along a lonely, winding road at twilight. In time, the sisters reached a river too deep to wade through and too dangerous to swim across. However, these sisters were learned in the magical arts, and so they simply waved their wands and made a bridge appear across the treacherous water. They were halfway across it when they found their path blocked by a hooded figure._

_And Death spoke to them. She was angry that she had been cheated out of the three new victims, for travelers usually drowned in the river. But Death was cunning. She pretended to congratulate the three sisters upon their magic, and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever enough to evade her._

_So the oldest sister, who was a combative woman, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a witch who had conquered Death! So Death crossed to an elder tree on the banks of the river, fashioned a wand from a branch that hung there, and gave it to the oldest sister._

_Then the second sister, who was an arrogant woman, decided that she wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death. So Death picked up a stone from the riverbank and gave it to the second sister, and told her that the stone would have the power to bring back the dead._

_And then Death asked the third and youngest sister what she would like. The youngest sister was the humblest and also the wisest of the sisters, and she did not trust Death. So she asked for something that would enable her to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And Death, most unwillingly, handed over her own Cloak of Invisibility._

_Then Death stood aside and allowed the three sisters to continue on their way, and they did so talking with wonder of the adventure they had had and admiring Death's gifts._

_In due course the sisters separated, each for her own destination._

_The first sister traveled on for a week more, and reaching a distant village, sought out a fellow witch with whom she had a quarrel. Naturally, with the Elder Wand as her weapon, she could not fail to win the duel that followed. Leaving her enemy dead upon the floor the oldest sister proceeded to an inn, where she boasted loudly of the powerful wand she had snatched from Death herself, and of how it made her invincible._

_That very night, another witch crept upon the oldest sister as she lay, wine-sodden upon her bed. The thief took the wand and for good measure, slit the oldest sister's throat._

_And so Death took the first sister for her own._

_Meanwhile, the second sister journeyed to her own home, where she lived alone. Here she took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in her hand. To her amazement and her delight, the figure of the boy she had once hoped to marry, before his untimely death, appeared at once before her._

_Yet he was sad and cold, separated from her as by a veil. Though he had returned to the mortal world, he did not truly belong there and suffered. Finally the second sister, driven mad with hopeless longing, killed herself so as to truly join him._

_And so Death took the second sister for her own._

_But though Death searched for the third sister for many years, she was never able to find her. It was only when she had attained a great age that the youngest sister finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to her daughter. And then she greeted Death as an old friend, and went with her gladly, and, equals, they departed this life._


	2. Bellatrix & Narcissa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Help! I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!

_Leaving her enemy dead upon the floor the oldest sister proceeded to an inn, where she boasted loudly of the powerful wand she had snatched from Death herself, and of how it made her invincible._

Leaving the girl sprawled across the dirty ground, the older boy proceeds to turn his head and boast loudly to his scruffy group of friends swaggering beside him, bragging as if he were invincible.

“Next time watch where you’re going you little bitch,” he says, spinning back around towards the girl with an unpleasant sneer. He isn’t even sure what “bitch” means. But he’s heard his father call his mother that enough times after knocking her to the ground. So it must be the right thing to say. 

His friends seem to agree, going by their muffled chuckles.

The six year old girl remains crying in the narrow alley, her neatly braided hair now coming undone, crisp winter coat etched with wrinkles, white lace gloves covered in dirt.

Bellatrix runs around the corner, long black hair curling around her, and stops abruptly at seeing the small blonde head of her younger sister lying near a puddle in the middle of a filthy road in Muggle London. A boy not much older than her towers over her sister’s smaller form, pulling his foot back, about to send more dirt onto her stained shoes. 

“Cissy!” she screams, her outburst stopping the boy mid-kick.

“What do you think you’re doing?! Get away from her!” her panic at seeing her sister hurt and her fury at the boy who hurt her causing Bellatrix’s shout to be louder than what is normally deemed appropriate in public. Unacceptable. She leaves her sister for five minutes and this is what happens. Mother and father will never trust her to watch her sister again. 

“Oi, we got another one,” one of the onlookers helpfully supplies as Bellatrix rushes forward to stand between the looming boy and her defenseless sister. 

“I said get away from her,” she repeats fiercely when the boy doesn’t move.

“Make me. I dare you,” he responds, looking at her like she’s something amusing, not taking the challenge seriously.

Angrily, she raises her arms to push him away, but before she can make contact, she feels a sharp jab at her shoulder and finds herself on the ground next to her sister. 

“Hah, didn’t think so, princess.” The boy smirks down at her. 

Bellatrix watches, seething, as the boy strides away, his friends still snickering. She hates this feeling, not being able to fight back, not being able to protect her sister. 

“You’re weak.” A voice appears in her head. It whispers to her, attempting to penetrate the deepest corners of her mind. She shakes the voice away. 

She tried to fight back; she really did. Next time she will do better. She never wants to feel so powerless, so humiliated ever again.

She can’t wait to start at Hogwarts next year where she can learn real magic, not that useless dribble Uncle Alphard tried to teach her on her last birthday with the fake toy wand. What use is turning your hair pink and throwing up sparks? It wouldn’t have stopped that boy from hurting Narcissa. 

When she can use magic, no one will hurt her or Narcissa ever again, especially not a bunch of poor stupid Muggles. 

Bellatrix is extending a hand to help her younger sister up, when their middle sister Andromeda frantically finds them, their parents trailing close behind. The family of five shortly return home as it would be quite improper to continue shopping with their youngest appearing so disheveled.

This is the first time Bellatrix comes upon Narcissa fallen on the ground.

~~~

The second time Bellatrix comes upon Narcissa fallen on the ground, she’s walking down the hallway to her fifth year potions class. A girl with wavy chestnut hair is muttering apologetically while bending over her younger sister, who again is sprawled on the ground, surrounded by her scattered books. 

Recognizing the girl with chestnut hair, she pulls out her unyielding walnut wand, spouting off _furnunculus_ without a second thought. Immediately, the girl stumbles back with a shriek as her face erupts in painful boils. 

“Next time watch where you’re going you filthy Mudblood,” she says with contempt. 

“You didn’t need to be so mean,” Andromeda tells her later, settling herself on the dark green sofa in the Slytherin common room. “She was already helping Cissy pick up her books by the time you got there.”

Bellatrix, sitting in the solo arm chair by the fire, doesn’t look up from her book about hexes and curses. The girl had been escorted to the hospital wing by her red-haired friend to see the new matron (“Madam Pomphrey,” Andromeda smugly reminds her), and the two had yet to return. Still, the Pimple Jinx wasn’t enough; she needs to find something better. 

“It was only a warning,” Bellatrix replies acidly, her focus on page 232 of her book about an entrail-expelling curse from the 1600s. She hopes there’s a diagram. 

“If I really wanted to be mean, the Mudblood wouldn’t have been able to walk away at all afterwards.” 

“But why couldn’t—” Andromeda starts to reply, only to purse her lips instead as she spots Narcissa emerging from the first year dormitories. Narcissa hates it when her older sisters fight, so Bellatrix and Andromeda make a combined effort to only do it behind heavy silencing spells.

Narcissa snuggles up to the middle sister on the sofa. Andromeda wraps an arm around her shoulder and hugs her tightly. 

“Thanks Bella,” Narcissa says after a long pause. 

Bellatrix finally looks up from her book and into her youngest sister’s open expression. The book did have a diagram, several in fact, and very detailed. She is pleased. 

She regards her two sisters for a moment entwined on the sofa, her face blank, before giving Narcissa a cheeky wink and returning her attention to the fascinating diagram of a dissected large intestine.

Narcissa giggles. 

Andromeda shifts on the sofa and starts braiding Narcissa’s long blonde hair, as per their nightly routine. Nothing else is said on the topic. The night ends with all three sisters piled on the sofa in an uncontrollable fit of laughter pointing at a picture in Bellatrix’s book of an unfortunate wizard with horse tails growing haphazardly out of parts of his body. Each time the tails move, as if to bat away flies, the wizard in the image jumps in surprise. 

From that day forward, Bellatrix makes it a point to hex any Muggle-borns on sight. She’s already used to hurling daily insults and cursing anyone who annoys her more than the usual half-brained idiot, but now she ruthlessly draws her wand on every Muggle-born at Hogwarts. A younger Hufflepuff boy unluckily gets hexed five times in one week until he learns to rearrange his schedule to avoid passing her at meal times. 

By the end of term, everyone gives her and her circle of Slytherin elite a wide berth whenever she deems to pass them in the hallways. 

Andromeda complains that people are ignoring her, too scared to talk to her for fear of Bellatrix’s wrath. “That’s too bad,” Bellatrix tells her, “I’m doing this for you too, you know.” Andromeda rolls her eyes but stops her whinging.

Narcissa reports going unbothered in the hallways, and it all seems worth it. Even after her eldest sister graduates, Narcissa is never bothered at Hogwarts again, Bellatrix’s legacy living on.

Bellatrix feels strong, powerful, vindicated. To be able to control people, to force them to do her bidding. 

And still the voice in her head murmurs...

“You’re weak.”

~~~

The third time Bellatrix comes upon Narcissa fallen on the ground, she is barging into Narcissa’s house after hearing the unfathomable news that an infant Harry Potter has defeated the Dark Lord. Impossible. Outrageous. And yet, she is Voldemort’s most faithful servant; he would not disappear without telling her at least.

“Cissy!” Bellatrix screams into the cold abyss that is Malfoy Manor. “Tell me you heard the news! It cannot possibly be true. I will kill the blasted Potter boy myself!” 

No response. 

The Malfoy family portraits lining the walls look on at her disinterestedly.

“Cissy!” she yells again, agitation growing when she is met with more silence.

“Homenum revelio,” she murmurs into the empty hallway. It would be just like her sister to sneak off to Madam Malkins to peruse the newest dress collection while the rest of the world goes to hell.

The low swooping sensation in her stomach, caused by the spell, confirms that her sister is indeed home. 

Stalking across the first floor, she sends every door banging open at once with an aggressive flick of her wand. Cursing, she climbs the ridiculously winding staircase to the next floor and repeats the motion.

She finds her younger sister in the fourth floor study, usually only reserved for the Master of the House. Her sister is hunched over herself, kneeling on the ornate rug next to Lucius’s intimidatingly large desk. One drawer is left ajar, as if pulled open in a hurry and then forgotten. 

Her sister is clutching an innocuous looking baby rattle in her hands, grasping so tightly her knuckles are white with lack of circulation. She doesn’t appear to notice Bellatrix’s approach, either because she’s in too much pain or too distressed to do so. 

“Cissy,” Bellatrix says harshly for the third time in less than ten minutes. 

“What—the—fuck?” She pauses to enunciate each word separately, finally running out of patience. 

She hates seeing her younger sister like this. It brings out long forgotten protective urges in her, not felt since her time at Hogwarts nearly twelve years ago, when Narcissa would still wear her hair in a braid. Urges she does not want to feel towards her disappointment of a sister.

Narcissa, who grew up into a meek, complacent, housewife with no ambition, no commitment to the cause. Who is happy to let her domineering husband control her every action. She knows her sister didn’t even take the Dark Mark because Lucius said it would mar her perfect skin. 

After having Draco last year, Bellatrix only sees Narcissa in passing at the Dark Lord’s meetings and for monthly tea with their parents. Both of which are spent making polite small talk and trying not to upset the other witches and wizards in the room.

“I c-c-can’t—” Narcissa starts to speak. She cuts off with a harsh breath, still not looking up from the rattle in her hands. 

“They took him,” she finishes unsteadily.

“Took who? Draco is sleeping downstairs. Or he was, until I woke him.” 

Bellatrix is beyond annoyed. She should be out hunting down the Potter spawn, not here comforting her sister about a misplaced rattle. She scans the room looking for any helpful Dark artifacts she can use in her search. None, pity.

“They took Lucius,” Narcissa at last manages to say. 

Bellatrix scoffs loudly. “And they’ll be taking me any day now too, but you were already expecting that. What’s really the problem?” It’s not like they haven’t all been planning for this possibility, the ministry belatedly catching on and calling for their capture.

“The Longbottoms have been tailing us for months. When Lucius was arrested, I thought it was just for being associated with the Dark Lord, but then—she points to the drawer left ajar—I found this open.” She pauses, choosing her words carefully. “Lucius told me beforehand that if anyone found out, this drawer in his desk would be triggered to open.”

She holds up the rattle for Bellatrix to see. “I was to use the emergency portkey inside to take Draco somewhere safe, someplace far from England.”

“Lucius, what did he do that’s so terrible he can’t bribe his way out and you have to flee the manor?” 

“It’s n-n-nott—” Narcissa struggles to speak. “I can’t tell you,” she finishes lamely. 

“But now the Longbottoms know, and there’s no way I can get Lucius back. He needs to be here with me, with Draco.” Narcissa is shaking violently, her distressed face chalky white, as if the mere thought of being separated from Lucius is enough to cause her to faint to Death—maybe it is enough. Her sister seems off somehow; maybe she should call a Healer before leaving to kill Potter. 

Reaching down with impatient hands, she grasps Narcissa’s bony shoulders and yanks her up to a standing position beside the desk. Narcissa leans back against it for support.

“What will happen if you can’t get Lucius back? Why can’t you take the portkey and leave like planned?” Bellatrix asks, confused. Something isn’t right. It’s not like her sister to be self-sacrificing even for the sake of her smarmy husband, especially not when her son’s future hangs in the balance. 

Narcissa fiddles with the rattle, having never left her hands. “I can’t tell you anything specific, but Draco and I need to stay here. And without Lucius we’re ruined.” 

“Alright fine,” says Bellatrix, scrutinizing her sister and realizing exactly how thin and exhausted she looks. She’s definitely not well. Stress, fatigue, or something more? She comes to her decision, brain already flying through possible scenarios. 

“I’ll take care of it.” She starts towards the office door. Narcissa exclaims in surprise and despair, reaching for her, “No Bella, you can’t! I’ll think of something.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it,” she states firmly, non-negotiable steel in her tone. “Stay here with Draco. Do not move until I send word or someone comes for you.”

Not bothering to look at her sister on the way out, she bolts through the house and back towards the front gates before Disapparating away.

She Apparates with her husband Rodolphus onto the manicured front lawn of the Longbottom residence, the early morning light giving the quaint house an ominous hue; they don’t have much time before the sun peeks above the horizon. A second pop announces the arrival of two more Death Eaters, Rabastan and Barty. She tells them the Longbottom’s have information about their master’s whereabouts, that they need to be interrogated under heavy duress. They believe her. Idiots, the lot of them, like the Dark Lord would let anything so important slip to a couple of low-rank Aurors.

How careless, not even a full two days since Harry Potter was hailed as the Boy Who Lived and the Longbottoms have already released the heavier of the protective wards on their house. They bring down the remaining wards within minutes. They grab Frank and Alice while their infant son is whisked away by his formidable looking Grandmother.

“Tell me what you know,” Bellatrix demands, holding her walnut wand perilously close to Alice Longbottom’s right eyeball. “Tell me everything.” 

Her useless husband stands guard by the door of their hideout—wouldn’t want to be caught too soon. In the next room over, Frank Longbottom screams again. 

“Please, we don’t know anything.” The Longbottoms are either magnificent liars or really don’t know anything. 

“Crucio.” Bellatrix directs her wand at Alice’s heart.

After agonizing seconds the pain stops, leaving Alice shaky and crying. Bellatrix dives into her distraught mind with a barely audible “Legilimens.” She’s already tried looking through Frank Longbottom’s mind and found nothing notable, then passed him off to Rabastan and Barty to play. 

Alice’s mind is struggling to keep her thoughts behind its meager defenses. Bellatrix, being a skilled Occlumens herself—she didn’t become the Dark Lord’s right hand by spilling his secrets left and right—easily recognizes and burns through the pitiful barriers left. 

She catches a wandering trail of thought. _Lucius,_ it says. She follows it back to a child-size set of drawers; opens the topmost drawer. Memories are folded inside, neatly pressed, organized by shape and color. She snatches all of them related to Lucius and scatters them about to wade through.

Lucius, standing in Knockturn Alley, face shrouded in shadow, accepting a package from a hooded figure before walking away.

Lucius, arguing about transferring money with the goblins in Gringotts. 

Lucius, steadily pointing his wand at Theodore Nott Sr. outside a seedy pub near Edinburgh.

On and on. Lucius, Lucius, Lucius. All in terribly suspicious scenarios, but nothing substantially incriminating. 

Frustrated, Bellatrix is about to open the second drawer when a flash of perfectly straightened long blonde hair and petite figure catches her attention. She watches, perplexed, as a familiar man with greasy black hair and a large hooked nose enters the memory. 

_Oh my dear Cissy, what did you do?_

Several moments later, she has her answer. Her baffling, highly improbable, inexplicably true answer. 

“Who did you tell?” she purrs directly into Alice’s ear, not wanting to be overheard. 

“N-no one,” Alice stutters out. Bellatrix grips her hair hard, a warning. “That’d better be the truth. If it’s not, I will find every single person you told and burn them alive,” her grip says.

Bellatrix faces a dilemma. She can’t simply obliviate the Longbottoms; the memories would be forgotten on the surface but a skilled Legilimens would be able to recover them. She could kill them, she notes, but she did promise the others a bit of fun. All it would take is a little extra push to leave their minds in total chaos, completely unreadable even to Frank and Alice themselves.

“Do it,” the voice in her head murmurs. “You’ve killed before. How is this any different?”

“You won’t be weak anymore,” it taunts.

“Let’s see who cracks first, you or your darling husband,” she says as she releases her brutal grip on Alice’s hair. 

“No please. He doesn’t know anything. Just let him go... please.” Alice’s last words before being gagged with a swish of Bellatrix’s wand.

Bellatrix doesn’t let him go. 

So this is the rumored Gryffindor bravery, fighting until the last breath. Is it really worth it? All this extra pain and unnecessary suffering. For what? The ending is the same. 

Bellatrix watches as Alice Longbottom’s mind breaks.

Her screams turn into silence. Her twitching body gradually slows until she’s no different than a rigid statue. No last hurrah or triumphant “fuck you,” Alice slips away into oblivion, feeling pain no longer. Bellatrix releases the curse and Alice goes limp in the chair, staring dazedly into the empty air. She doesn’t acknowledge her torturers or her blank husband sitting beside her.

Something in Bellatrix’s mind breaks too. 

Her powerful wand of dragon heartstring core thrums in her hand; she throws her head back and cackles madly, hysterically. Her chest convulses as she gasps for breath.

_There is no happily co-existing_ , she realizes, in this world of ravenous snakes and lions, ravens and badgers. The strong will always destroy the weak… and she vows never to be weak again.

“Eat or be eaten,” the voice whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cameos abound. There's only more to come.


	3. Bellatrix & Lord Voldemort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellatrix goes to a sauna, tries yoga, and does some deep thinking in Azkaban.

Bellatrix jerks awake.

She listens for any voices but all that meets her is the howling of the wind outside.

She’s slumped on the dirty floor, her back supported by an equally dirty wall. Her legs are curled up to her chest, her scrawny arms tightly wrapped around them. 

The rat gnawing on her tattered sleeve scuttles away and escapes through the bars before she can attempt to catch it.

She looks around the dingy cell, but there’s nothing new to find. The uncomfortable cot remains in the far corner next to a lone chair and desk. The plate with untouched food sits next to the barred door just as she left it yesterday. A pile of dust is accumulating in the corner; Bellatrix has been fastidiously adding to it everyday. She can see the splattered red on the wall from where someone previously had hit their head repeatedly. 

She turns to the window above her desk, the only source of light in the cramped room. The weather never changes; the dementors make sure of that. Bellatrix knows this, but she looks up out the window anyways. She’s already spent hours, days staring out this window. Outside is bleak and grey, just like the inside of her cell. After a long while, she turns her head away.

When she glances back into the room, her gaze lands on her father who is standing beside the desk peering down at it. The desk is littered with lines, symbols, incomprehensible words, scratched into the wood by Bellatrix before her nails had broken and her fingers had bled.

“What are you doing here?” she croaks, her throat raw from disuse. She doesn’t bother getting up from the ground. She hopes her lack of manners will irritate her father just that little bit more.

“I’m here to see you, of course,” comes the reply. He looks up impassively from the desk.

“Doubtful.” 

“But I am.”

She sneers. Her father hasn’t bothered to concern himself with her in years. It would make no difference to him whether she was alive, imprisoned, or dead. Narcissa is the perfect daughter who her parents constantly dote on.

The head of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, as usual, is dressed in immaculate green robes, his posture stiff and formal. He looks exactly as he did the last time Bellatrix saw him, when she had managed to sit through an entire afternoon of her parents cooing at Narcissa’s slobbering infant. After an argument had arisen with her mother about when she was finally going to produce an heir, she’d stormed out of her family home and hadn’t returned.

“Your mother is very disappointed,” says her father. He doesn’t specify what is disappointing: the war, Muggle-borns, _her._

Either way, she couldn’t care less. “Tell her to get over it.”

“You know she won’t.”

“That’s not my problem,” she tries to say haughtily, but it comes out more as a pitiful wheeze.

Her and her father are both stubborn enough that they could continue this useless conversation for the next hour, but Bellatrix would rather put an end to his unwelcome visit sooner rather than later.

“Why are you here?” she asks again. She doesn’t expect an actual answer.

Her father is now staring listlessly out the tiny window.

“An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” 

“Fascinating,” she says dryly, barely stopping herself from rolling her eyes. 

“Indeed,” her father muses, either missing or more likely ignoring her sarcastic tone. “An interesting Muggle phrase dating back centuries. I find I can empathize quite well with it.”

Like a switch, her vague annoyance flares to an inhumane rage. “You dare use a filthy Muggle phrase in my presence!” she all but screeches before launching herself off the floor, hands ready to claw at his white throat. 

She slams to a halt, as if an invisible wall is blocking her from reaching the other half of the room. Her father doesn’t even flinch at her outburst, but remains studying the grey landscape. She struggles futilely against the wall, arms flailing wildly while spitting with fury. Her frizzy uncombed hair crackles around her with suppressed magic. 

Her father turns away from the window to look at her and says calmly, “You and I were always too much alike.” His expression would be sad, wistful even, if not for the manic gleam in his black eyes. One that Bellatrix has seen many times. One that she hates because it is all too familiar.

She snarls at him, teeth bared, her untamed magic swirling around her. Without her walnut wand, there is no release for her volatile magic. It coils up inside her, seeping through the cracks, begging to be used.

“I WILL NEVER BE LIKE YOU!” she screams at him, her vision going red. 

“Oh sweet Bella, but you already are,” is the last she hears before she explodes, energy bursting out of her, scalding in its intensity. The room erupts in electric blue flames, instantly alighting everything inside, even her careful pile of dust cannot escape. 

Suddenly exhausted, her knees buckle under her and her eyelids start to drift close. She squints through the sapphire flames into her empty room as she finally loses consciousness. 

~~~

A baby starts to wail in the third bedroom. A house elf rushes past, baby bottle in hand. Bellatrix is four. She doesn’t understand the big deal about babies. They’re loud and stinky and gross, but her mother and father haven’t paid attention to anything else for months now. She thought maybe things would be better after she turned four, but then another baby appeared and her mother fell ill. 

Her father stumbles out of the bedroom exhausted. There are deep bags under his eyes and a weariness to his gaze. 

“Where’s Mother? I want to see her!” Bellatrix marches towards her father.

“Bella sweetie, she’s resting right now. You can see her later.”

“I wanna see her now!” She stomps her foot, ready to throw an epic tantrum. 

Her father, however, doesn’t let her get that far. “Enough! You will see her later. That’s final.” He starts walking away towards the master bedroom, probably wanting to check on Mother again or take yet another nap.

“But whyyyyy?” she whinges in the annoying way that only four year olds can. “You don’t let me do anything anymore! It’s so booooring!”

“Bella, honey.” He pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation, scrunching his eyes shut. “Your mother needs peace and quiet to rest. Having baby Cissy was very hard on her.” 

“Then just get rid of it. We don’t need two babies.” She thinks this is an excellent solution. _Why didn’t her parents do this sooner?_ If the baby is causing her mother to be sick, then getting rid of it will make her mother better. In fact, why stop at one, why not get rid of both babies? Then her parents wouldn’t be distracted and play with her again.

“I don’t want any babies. I think we should—” 

She is abruptly silenced by a painful smack across the face. This is nothing new in the Black household. When her mother is exceptionally displeased, Bellatrix and all the house elves know to stand a safe distance away when talking to her, lest she take her annoyance out on them. But this is the first time her father has lost control and hit her. She’s too surprised to feel properly chastised.

Her father, however, instantly backs away horrified. There’s a wild light in his eyes that makes her think he would very much like to smack her again even though he’s quickly backing away. He retreats into his bedroom, leaving Bellatrix standing alone in the upstairs hallway, her cheek burning.

Bellatrix is thirteen. She’s walking through the back garden with her father on one of his nightly strolls. She doesn’t usually join him on his evening meanderings, only when mother is being particularly bothersome and nags more than usual during dinner. Her and her father have an understanding; they find solace in each other when the rest of the house becomes too much. Today’s fight was about Bellatrix’s less than stellar grades in History of Magic the previous term. It’s not her fault Professor Binns is the most boring man, or ghost, in existence.

“You should listen to your mother more.” Her father breaks the companionable silence.

“I will when she listens to me,” she responds, sounding bored. It’s an age-old argument, only formalities require them to keep repeating it. Her father knows she will continue infuriating her mother. She knows her father will try to talk her down every time. 

But something is different today; she can feel it. There’s a humming in the air, like potential energy just waiting to be ignited. She doesn’t want to keep repeating useless conversations today, so she dares to say more.

“Everything would be fine if she wasn’t so terrible all the time. Honestly, I don’t know why you agreed to marry her. All she does is boss you around. You don’t even leave the house anymore unless you get her permission. And Andy’s turning out just like her.” 

She waits for her father’s harsh reprimand for insulting the family such, but it never comes. He continues walking at the same measured pace, though his breathing has become harsher and his hands are minutely shaking. He is pointedly not looking at her, face turned resolutely forward. 

She knows she should stop before she pushes too far and destroys the fragile balance the two of them maintain, but she doesn’t stop.

“Thank Merlin Cissy is nearly mute or I’d have to kill myself just to be able to get any sleep at home. Really, I should ask Hogwarts if I could stay over the holidays. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with Mother at all. She’s a right bitch, she is.”

At her last sentence, her father whirls around, body lunging towards her. His shaking hands surge up to grasp her pale throat.

“Shut up! Shut up you ungrateful child!” he screams, inches from her face. His tight grip threatens to cut off her breathing, her eyes start to water. For some inexplicable reason, she isn’t afraid as her father rattles her smaller frame, causing her riotous curls to fall into her face. 

“Make me,” she taunts him, looking up through her black curls, shining eyes glinting at him. She sees a matching expression on his face, black eyes so very similar to hers. 

He suddenly releases her and roughly pushes her away. Instead his bone-white hands come up to wrap around his own bare throat and squeeze. 

“Shut up. Shut up,” he repeats, but he isn’t talking to her anymore. He doesn’t seem to see her at all, staring past her. He mumbles repeatedly, lost in another inaudible conversation. 

The voice in Bellatrix’s head stirs, the same voice that appeared when she was ten helping pick Narcissa up in a London alley. It speaks to her again. “That will be you one day,” it says.

“I will never be like him. He’s weak.”

“And so are you. You know I’m right.”

She meanders back to the house, leaving her father clutching his throat muttering in the garden. As she steps inside, she hears a distant cackle. It isn’t a pleasant laugh, more like the owner is in pain rather than pleasure. She shakes off the unsettling laugh and closes the door behind her. She makes her way to the sitting room, where she can already hear Andromeda’s shrill voice arguing about something or other.

Her father remains locked in his room for the remainder of the break and avoids her every holiday after. Her sisters, noticing the change but not the reason why, pester her mercilessly until she hits them with a Tongue-Tying Curse.

Years later, when the resentment towards her father has faded Bellatrix will wonder what the point of it all was. Why was her father so adamant on avoiding her after the garden incident? It’s not like she was afraid of _him._

It takes her a long time to consider another possibility. He was the one who was afraid of _her,_ afraid of what he knew she would become. When he looked into her shining eyes and recognized the same mad glint in them.

~~~

Bellatrix jerks awake.

There are voices outside her cell. 

“He seems so unaffected. It’s unnerving!” a voice says, coming closer. “Even asked if he could borrow my newspaper, calm as can be.” 

There’s merely a grunt in response by the annoyed guard.

The pair is close enough that she can see the voice belongs to a short grey-haired man holding a green bowler hat. 

He rambles on, “Never would have guessed that Sirius Black would be the sanest one in this place.” 

Wrong, obviously. She starts to laugh loudly. This is the funniest news she’s heard in months, possibly years. She immediately decides the man with the bowler hat is a supreme idiot and Sirius is a superb actor.

She’s seen the mad gleam in her cousin Sirius’s eyes, when he was sixteen and they’d had a violent row about pure-blood responsibilities right before he ran away, the coward. It’s the same manic look that’s in her father’s eyes, the same one in her Aunt Walburga’s eyes, and the same one that she sees in her own eyes occasionally. Sirius may hide it well, but she knows what he is.

No one from the Black family could survive Azkaban and be called normal afterwards. And definitely not “the sanest one” in the entire wretched prison. She laughs again at the ridiculousness of the thought.

Dismissing the man walking past her cell as unimportant, she ignores the rest of his lengthy chatter. 

Still chuckling to herself, she goes to look out the window. She sits at her desk and stares out at the endless grey. She lightly taps her fingers on the desk—2 quick taps, a precise 3 second pause, then 2 more taps. She doesn’t care about her nails, already cracked and caked with dried blood.

The weather never changes. 

~~~

“Alright class, let’s get started!” 

Bellatrix stops her excited whispering with her desk neighbour as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor calls the third years to attention.

“Today we will be learning how to banish a boggart. Everyone please line up here.”

There’s a mad dash to reach the professor first. A scrawny red-haired boy accidentally bumps into her. She harshly stomps on his foot in response, causing him to yowl in pain as he hops away and loses his spot in line. She promptly grabs her friend's hand and drags her into the line to stand in front of her. Her friend is so short that Bellatrix can see the rattling cabinet at the front of the classroom even over her friend’s permed red hair. 

“We’ve already reviewed the spell and wand motions last class. Just remember that whatever you fear, whatever the boggart turns into cannot actually hurt you. And that laughter is the deciding factor.

Miss Skeeter, it looks like you’re up first.” A small girl with limp blonde hair steps forward. The professor flicks their wand to open the cabinet and the boggart emerges. 

Bellatrix has been especially excited and nervous for this lesson. The one and only time she’s encountered a boggart, she had been helping her mother sort through old family artifacts in the attic. Being a curious eight year old, she had decided to leave no item untouched and no drawer unopened. Which is when she had pried open the bottom drawer of a ratty old dresser and yelped at the spotted olive green snake slithering inside. 

Alarmed by her yelp of surprise her mother had come over to crouch behind her and peer into the drawer. 

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little grass snake. You’re going to be in Slytherin for Circe’s sake. You’d better get used to them soon.” 

Her mother had then refused to banish the boggart until Bellatrix could bring herself to carefully touch the writhing body of the hissing snake. Her mother had laughed at her as she had rapidly jerked her hand away at the smooth feel of the snake’s scales.

After playing with Andromeda in the garden so many times and being sorted into Slytherin, Bellatrix is confident she is no longer afraid of snakes. But she’s impatiently curious to see what her new greatest fear is. Whatever it is, she will squash that fear too.

“Next!” the professor calls. They are already halfway through the line. Her friend steps forward, shoulders squared, wand out. 

The boggart shifts, twirls, inverts, then splits into two people. They’re both crying. How odd.

“Em, why does the boggart turn into your parents crying?” she wants to ask, but doesn’t get the chance before the boggart speaks, a rapid volley of words as the couple tearfully talk over each other. 

“They’re gone—”

“We can’t find them—”

“Missing for days—”

“Could be dead—”

“It’s all your fault,” they say in unison. Okay, that was eerily creepy.

Her friend is too startled to move. The rest of the class is tittering in confusion. 

Bellatrix waits for a long moment for her friend to start reciting the spell. When her friend doesn’t move, she walks forward and sharply prods her friend’s frozen form. Her friend twitches into action, spinning around and bolting towards the door. Bellatrix can sense more than see the silent tears streaming down her friend’s face.

“I’m sorry, I need to send a message to my parents,” her friend tosses back over her shoulder. “I need to know if my brothers—” She chokes, gulping back more tears. 

Her friend reaches the door and disappears with the shocked professor gaping after her. 

“Well,” says their professor, “that was unexpected.” 

The class mumbles in agreement. Bellatrix glares at them until they all fall silent, although she personally agrees. What an irrational thing to be afraid of. People die or go missing everyday; it will happen to someone in her family eventually too, but there’s no reason to be scared of the inevitable.

“Ok then, you’re up next Miss Black.”

She steps forward. The boggart shifts again, merging, spiraling...

The lights flicker off, the room is plunged into complete black, somehow the light outside no longer filters in through the window. She can barely make out the silhouette of the cabinet in front of her. 

The class panics. And then the voices start in the darkness. 

“Why are you fighting me?” one says.

“You know I’m right,” says another.

“I will always win in the end,” one says loudly behind her, causing her classmates to jump in fright.

“You’re weak,” one whispers directly into her ear. She shivers but does not back away.

“Riddikulus!” she shouts into the darkened room, waving her walnut wand precisely. 

The room brightens, sunlight entering again. On the floor in front of her sits an old-fashioned music box carved meticulously from shining wood. Instead of playing a jaunty toon, it spits out words disjointedly. 

Actually, only two words. 

“Fight. Fight. Fight,” it says. “Wuh- Wuh- Win fight win.” 

The class snickers amused; Bellatrix is not. She remembers her father standing in the garden, hands at his own throat, muttering to the empty air. 

_Yes,_ she thinks, _I will win this fight._

A rumor starts at school that Bellatrix, the eldest sister of the House of Black, was kidnapped as a child and forced to live in a cellar in complete darkness while her captors taunted her. She was only rescued when her wealthy parents had handed over an exorbitant amount of money in exchange for her freedom. 

Bellatrix doesn’t dispel the rumor.

~~~

Bellatrix jerks awake.

There are voices outside her cell. There are voices inside her cell. There are voices everywhere. 

The voices are suffocating her, a cacophony of sound, so loud her ears are ringing. The pressure in her head is impossible, the voices unbearable.

She leans her head against the cool wall, letting the chill seep into her, numbing her. It’s not enough, not nearly enough. 

She bangs her head against the wall. If she can only feel pain, maybe she won’t be able to hear the voices. It’s not enough.

She tries again. Bang! Her head throbs, but it’s still not enough.

Bang! Bang! Bang! 

Until she feels a trickle of blood descending her temple. Nothing is enough.

“Riddikulus! Riddikulus! Stop!” Her voice gets lost among the multitude of others. It’s like she didn’t speak at all, like she has no voice when there are already so many.

Her shoulders contort in on herself, trying to block the noise all around her. Her neck strains as she buries her head in her chest, hands clapped firmly over her ears. She lays curled on her meager cot hoping, praying, that the voices will stop. 

Seconds, minutes, hours pass. She doesn’t know. 

Eventually, she achingly removes her hands from her ears and rises from the bed, leaving blood on the pillow.

She goes to look out the window. The voices follow her, but she ignores them.

The weather never changes.

~~~

Bellatrix meets Bartemous Crouch Jr. when she is nineteen and about to be married. She isn’t excited by the prospect but knows it’s a necessary burden she must endure for the family. All of the notable pure-blood families will be attending, whether they agree with her family’s politics or not. 

At least Rodolphus Lestrange, her husband-to-be, is too dim-witted to realize yet that she’s not going to listen to a goddamn word he says. 

She checks her formal dress robes in the mirror one last time and tucks a black curl neatly behind her ear. Better get on with it. The sooner she gets this done with, the sooner she can finish that bottle of wine she started this morning.

Wrenching back the door, she prepares to stride out of the waiting room, and knocks stupendously into a wiry boy with a mop of fair hair. 

“Sorry, sorry. Was looking for the toilet,” the boy quickly apologizes. He looks to be about nine or ten years old, dressed in traditional formal robes, obviously here attending her wedding.

“Out of my way,” Bellatrix demands. She doesn’t have time for this. Her parents would be livid if she was late for her own wedding. On second thought, maybe she _should_ be late for her own wedding.

“Oh, wow,” the boy says. He’s looking up at her with wide eyes. “You’re really pretty.” He blushes faintly, a rose colour barely visible on his fair cheeks. His mouth curves into an embarrassed grimace, like he didn’t mean for the compliment to escape him.

“Um,” she says, not sure how to respond. Being flirted with by a nine year old boy was not on her agenda the day of her wedding.

“I just meant you’re really pretty. I’d marry you if you weren’t already getting married. Also if I was ten years older. I’ll be taller then,” he blurts out. He blushes scarlet then, mortified by his rambling. He hastily ducks around her and sprints away. She wonders if his parents put a Babbling Curse on the boy or if he’s always like that.

She arrives at her wedding ceremony with a bemused smile on her face. 

Five years later, Bellatrix is hurrying down the street outside the Ministry of Magic. The sun beats harshly down on the dirty pavement; she pulls her hood up further and continues her brisk walk, cloak billowing behind her. 

If she can make it to the nearest Apparition point soon, she’ll arrive at the Death Eater meeting early enough that she may be able to catch the Dark Lord alone and discuss her plan for werewolf recruitment. She may detest the werewolves, but she understands the strategy behind letting them join the cause. Plus, the Dark Lord has assured her that as soon as they have outlived their usefulness, he will let her assist in disposing them.

She is so distracted thinking about how the Dark Lord will reward her for her genius plan that she runs straight into a gangly teenage boy with a mop of fair hair. The impact causes the cloak to fall from her head, revealing her face.

“Sorry,” the boy says, looking up at her with wide eyes. He must be about fourteen or fifteen, still growing into his long limbs and dark eyebrows. She recognizes the boy.

She grins knowingly at him, “What, not going to call me pretty this time?” 

The boy glances down and coughs feeling embarrassed, clearly remembering the last time they quite literally ran into each other. 

Bellatrix briefly runs through her mental catalogue of what she knows about the boy. Pure-blood. Crouch family. Mother, boring. Father, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, merciless Dark Wizard catcher, in the running for the next Minister for Magic. Interesting, very interesting. The boy could be useful leverage. 

“How would you like to come with me for the afternoon?” she winks at him, stunning the boy. Before he can gather his thoughts to respond, she grabs his arm and Apparates them away to the meeting. 

The meeting ends with Bellatrix glowing under the Dark Lord’s praise and a new follower ready to pledge himself to the cause when he comes of age.

Three years later when the boy comes of age, she takes him on his first mission.

“Wow, that was amazing” he tells her afterwards, body humming with adrenaline. “And you’re really frightening when you’re duelling.”

She grins at him, amused. “Barty, are you scared of me?” she asks him half-mockingly half-serious.

“Well, yeah. A bit,” he responds, but there is admiration in his voice, not fear.

“Good,” she replies, a smirk settling on her face. 

“And you still think I’m pretty?” she asks. It’s a recurring line between the two of them, has been for years now.

“Of course,” he says sincerely like he always does, looking at her with those wide eyes of his.

“Good,” she replies.

Two years later, they’re being escorted from the courtroom on their way to be locked up in Azkaban. 

The guards leave them chained in the holding cells in the basement of the Ministry as they await the rest of their paperwork. Barty has temporarily dropped his act and stopped pleading for his mother, now that there’s no one around to fool. Bellatrix can hear him rattling his chains against the wall in the cell next to hers.

When the guards come to escort the boy, they pass her cell on the way out. She presses her pallid face between the bars and clears her throat. The group pauses; the boy glances over at her.

“You still think I’m pretty, right?” she asks. The boy’s stare turns devouring, taking in her matted hair, scratchy prison uniform, and cuffed hands.

“Of course,” he says sincerely like he always does. _He’s not lying,_ she realizes. He actually believes it, still believes it ten years later.

“Good,” she replies. The guards escort him away, his mop of fair hair ruffling as he walks. 

~~~

Bellatrix jerks awake.

There’s a chill seeping in from outside her cell.

A dementor floats by. Then another.

She sees them dragging a body past. It hangs limply in their scaly hands. The head, covered by a mop of fine hair, lolls grotesquely to one side.

She turns away.

Barty is dead.

She goes to look out the window. She stares numbly out, fingers unconsciously creating deep scratches into the desk. She doesn’t notice when her nails run ragged and her fingers start to bleed.

The weather never changes.

~~~

Bellatrix slams the front door to her family home. She’s fuming. She’s never racing Andromeda on a broom again. It’s embarrassing, is what it is, a skimpy second year beating a fifth year on a broom. The little cheat. _Where did she learn dirty tricks like that?_

She angrily flounces into the house, and tosses her broom carelessly to the side of the front door. It crashes loudly into a Japanese vase, crafted by a long forgotten ancestor, before falling to the white marble floor with a distinct clunk. 

She noisily makes her way to the sitting room, discarding her quidditch kit in pieces as she goes. She leaves a trail of gloves, wrist guards, knee pads, and shin guards littered throughout the long hallway. The house elves will pick them up later. Turning the corner, she stops abruptly in the doorway at the sight that meets her.

Sitting on her parents’ posh sofa is the most intimidating man she’s ever seen; his meticulously tailored black robes stand in sharp contrast to his bone-white skin. He scans her from deep crimson eyes, observing her grass stained trousers and sunburnt face. She flinches uncomfortably under his perceptive gaze. His lips quirk in the beginning of a knowing smirk. 

She glares at him. How dare he smirk at her like that in her own home.

Her parents are seated across from the pale stranger, sipping tea from their best china, Bellatrix notes. Her father ignores her. Her mother frowns at her undignified entrance. 

“Bella, must you tramp about the house like that? Go pick up your things immediately,” her mother admonishes. She turns her glare on her mother instead.

“No.”

She crosses her arms in defiance. Manners, be damned. She’s not going to willingly listen to her mother, even in front of a guest.

Her mother’s ashen face flashes in irritation. Her father remains passively staring at the wallpaper.

“If you would allow me,” says the stranger. She breaks the heated glare with her mother when the stranger casually waves a thin white hand. Her eyes are immediately drawn to the effortless sweeping motion. There’s a rustling sound in the hallway and then her broom and quidditch kit fly into the room, zipping towards her. 

Impressive. Nonverbal and wandless magic, seemingly with minimal effort. _Who is this powerful stranger?_ He is not submitting to her parents every whim, as she’s seen many of their guests do, so he must have a similarly high social status.

It’s all very intriguing.

Her arms snap up to deftly catch the flying items before they can crash into her. 

“Very impressive reflexes,” the stranger comments. She feels her cheeks heat as she preens under the praise.

The aura of power he emanates is intoxicating. She unconsciously gravitates towards it until she is standing directly in front of the pale stranger. 

From up close she notices that he’s easily twenty years her senior, yet he exudes a youthful arrogance that immediately captivates anyone in the room. Sharp cheekbones, carefully styled black hair, and observant wine-red eyes. She’s never paid much attention to superficial appearances before but oh, is she paying attention now. 

“Bellatrix Black, eldest daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, pleasure to meet you.” She extends her right hand in greeting, moving her quidditch supplies to hold under her left arm. She goes not for a handshake like she would usually, but places her palm facing downwards like she would during the beginning of a traditional courting period.

If the stranger notices the implication or is turned off by her young age, he doesn’t react. He only rises gracefully from the sofa, smiles charmingly at her and takes her hand in his, bringing it up to his lips to place a lingering kiss on the back of it. His lips are cold against her flushed skin. 

“The pleasure is all mine, I assure you,” he purrs. 

Nonetheless, her mother does notice the placement of her right hand and tries to hide her gasp of surprise. She’s never shown any interest in courting before. She knows she’ll have to marry as soon as school is finished, but has so far ignored her mother’s pleas to decide on a suitable pure-blood spouse. 

The stranger turns to face her parents, still seated on the sofa, and says, “Well, this has been a lovely visit. Thank you so much for your support. I will be in contact soon with the remaining details.”

With a slight bow, he bids goodbye and smoothly exits the room. Her father frowns after him, the first expression on his face since she entered the sitting room.

She peeks her head around the doorframe, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stranger’s tall retreating form. Her eyes fall instead on the Japanese vase sitting serenely next to the front door, the same vase she had smashed carelessly with her broom on her way inside. It now sits overflowing with beautiful dark burgundy roses. The haunting black-tinted roses are the exact same shade as the handsome man’s strange intelligent eyes. 

To wordlessly and wandlessly summon her quidditch equipment while simultaneously repairing the broken vase and also conjuring intricate flowers would be impossible for almost any modern witch or wizard. To do so from a completely different room, magic remaining unseen, would mean the caster would be equally as powerful as the great Albus Dumbledore. Perhaps even powerful enough to surpass him.

Bellatrix’s heart hammers in her chest, in fear or arousal, or both.

Lord Voldemort, as the man is called, or the Dark Lord, as he’s called by his supporters, returns only once to her home to visit her parents. It is nearly a year later. Bellatrix is home for the summer holidays awaiting her OWL results before starting her sixth year.

He is heading out towards the front door. She is heading towards the kitchen to pester the house elves for a snack. Their paths cross on the way. 

They both pause in their respective paths and nod politely at the other. She has recently been promised to the Lestrange boy, so it would no longer be proper for her to extend her hand in greeting. A shame, really, thinking of those cold lips pressed to her skin.

“I’m very glad to see you again, Miss Black. I would like to make you an offer.” 

His smile is pleasantly polite, but an underlying smirk shows he’s quite aware of the double meaning of his words.

Bellatrix, with her heartbeat fluttering madly in her chest, responds, “And what would that offer entail exactly?” 

“I have heard about your dealings at Hogwarts.”

_What dealings?_ Her almost failing History of Magic (again), her falling off her broom and nearly breaking her arm, her dominance in the dueling club, her hexing of Muggle-borns. All of the above?

He continues, “You are a very powerful witch, Miss Black. I would very much like for you to join our cause. It would be invaluable to have someone as skilled as you on our side.” The winning side is left implied. But she can hear it in his voice, confidence leaking through.

“I accept,” she responds a tad breathlessly.

“Excellent.”

She can only nod in response.

“Then I will see you at our next meeting.” 

He pauses, testing the words on his tongue.

“Goodbye, Bella,” he says and glides out the door, just as smoothly as before.

Bellatrix exhales a large breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She heads to the kitchen feeling the lightest she’s ever been.

The meetings are wonderful, being surrounded by like-minded folk who recognize the importance of pure-blood tradition. 

She’s still not of age and can’t do anything terribly important yet. So she is tasked with gathering information about the current students at Hogwarts, who could become potential recruits, who could become potential threats. She takes this assignment very seriously and begins to mentally catalogue all the students and their attributes.

After one of the meetings, she purposefully lingers behind, hoping to catch the Dark Lord for a moment alone. 

“Yes, Bella?” The Dark Lord approaches her. “You have something you wish to discuss with me?”

“I’ve been tracking the current students at Hogwarts, as you’ve asked. And I’ve come to recommend the few I think are most promising,” she reports.

She can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the mere proximity of him. She can feel his power pulsing around him, pulling her in closer.

“By all means, I will defer to your suggestions. Who do you have in mind?” he inquires.

“It will be easier if I show you,” she dares to say. Letting someone into one’s mind voluntarily is a show of complete and open trust. She is willing to give this to the Dark Lord. She hopes this will prove that she is already loyal to him and can be trusted with vital missions when the time comes. 

He looks at her approvingly, aware of the significance of such an act. 

He brings his wand to hover by her left temple. “May I?” he asks, staring at her face intently. She nods in response and loses herself in his glowing crimson eyes.

She feels the careful press of his wand against the side of her head and the gentle caress of a foreign mind begging entry into her own. She eagerly gives way to the feeling of the Dark Lord entering her mind and makes a mental note to ask him for help on her Occlumency and Legilimency skills, which will be useful for obtaining and securing information in the future.

The Dark Lord slowly probes into her mind, and she basks in the fleeting feeling of exhilarating intimacy. He diligently flips through her catalogue of Hogwarts students, pausing occasionally at the more interesting ones. He views her excited anticipation during her first meeting. He feels her rush of arousal during their first handshake. 

He moves deeper into her thoughts then, and she lets him, not fighting against the intrusion. He scans through her memories at Hogwarts, briefly focusing on a short red-haired girl before moving on. He sees memories of her and her sisters playing in her bedroom, her defiant expression during one of her mother’s scoldings, her and her father arguing in the garden. 

The Dark Lord pulls his wand away, breaking the connection. She blinks. Her mind feels upsettingly empty without his cool presence.

“An interesting condition, your father has.” To Bellatrix’s relief, he does not sound disgusted or angry, but cautiously curious. “It’s a fight he will not win. He is already losing, and badly.”

He reaches up to place his hand on her temple where his wand was moments before. His icy touch calms her. “There is no need to fight it; it is a part of him. If he continues to fight it, if he continues to fear it, it will win.”

It is clear the Dark Lord is not only referring to her father when he speaks of fear and fighting. 

“I understand, Master.” She is so grateful that he does not scorn her for this weakness. “I will do my best,” she promises.

“Please, Bella.” He peers at her with his penetrating gaze. “You may address me as ‘my Lord.’”

~~~

Bellatrix jerks awake.

There’s a voice inside her cell. It calls to her, soothes her, comforts her. 

She opens her eyes, and looks into the piercing gaze of her beloved Dark Lord. He is still exceedingly handsome even if his unnerving red eyes and skull-like face are more demon than human.

“My Lord,” she rasps, her croaky voice laced with gratitude.

“Do you fear me, Bellatrix?” he says.

“Yes,” she responds, adoration shining through her eyes. “I fear and admire you above all else. I fear your disappointment in me, that you will not find me worthy.”

“Good,” he replies, a smirk settling on his handsome face. “That means I win.”

She smiles, a feral smile with too many teeth. “Of course, my Lord, you were always going to win.”

“That I was,” he easily agrees. He rests a hand tenderly on her head, as if acknowledging a particularly obedient pet. 

“Sleep now, my most devoted one. I need you well rested.” 

As she drifts off into a peaceful sleep, she hears him murmuring above her in a soothing voice. “To feel fear is to know your place. I’m glad you finally understand yours.”

The words seep under her skin like poison, sink into her muscles, settle into her bones.

“Fear or be feared,” the voice whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's real, what's not? Will we ever know? Will Bella?


	4. Bellatrix & Molly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Em and Bee hash out some old history with a blast from the past.

The guests, adorned in opulent robes and salacious jewels, twirl lazily under the lowly twinkling lights. They swing methodically to and fro, perfectly coordinated in an intricate dance between the rich, the powerful, and the ambitious. 

But Bellatrix notices none of this, as she glides across the ballroom floor. She slips and slides her way past the newly appointed Keeper for the Hollywood Harpies, narrowly missing elbowing her in the knee. She pivots around the Head of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, accidentally catching his sleeve and causing him to stumble backward. But Bellatrix ignores all of this, as she chases after Andromeda across the ballroom floor. 

“Hah! I got you!” shouts Bellatrix, grabbing the back of Andromeda’s beaded dress and yanking her to a stop. “I win. Now you have to do whatever I say for the rest of the day,” she brags, already thinking up embarrassing tasks she can make her younger sister do.

“You’re gonna get in trouble,” comes Narcissa’s chiding voice from beside her. “Mother and Father said to behave.” Their littlest sister is scowling at them from her perch atop an ornamentally decorated chair, her short legs dangling high above the ground.

“So?... Mother and Father are busy. They won’t even notice,” Bellatrix replies with a dismissive wave of her hand towards a crowded corner, where the Master and Missus Black are chatting animatedly with the Minister for Magic.

“Hmph,” says Narcissa, sounding as annoyed as any five year old can. 

“And I’m nine. I’m the eldest, so I know what I’m talking about.”

“Nuh ugh,” interjects Andromeda. “You never know what you’re talking about,” she says snarkily.

_Why does Andromeda always have to argue with her?_ As the oldest, she should automatically be the smartest; she should get to boss her younger sisters around without question. But _noooo,_ Andromeda always has to complain and start an argument.

“Shut it, Andy,” she grouches. 

“Yeah! Shut it, Andy,” a pair of voices chorus behind her. She turns to see two boys with startling red hair and friendly freckled faces bouncing toward them. Compared to their lightly tanned skin, their bright red hair gives the impression of burning flames atop their heads.

“Hi!” one of the boys says, beaming. “Nice to—”

“—meet you,” the other boy finishes, also grinning.

“I’m Gideon—”

“I’m Fabian—”

“We’re twins!” they exclaim together, wearing matching smiles of mischief.

“Yes, I can see,” Bellatrix responds frostily. She looks over their faded robes and scuffed shoes.

“Wanna play a game?” asks Gideon.

“We’ll go easy on you,” adds Fabian.

“Sure,” replies Andromeda before Bellatrix can scare them away. “What—” she starts to ask before being stopped by a voice in the distance getting closer.

“Gid! Fab! What did Mum and Dad tell you about wandering off on your own? What are you doing over there?” The voice belongs to a short girl with hair just as alarmingly red as the twins. 

“Nothin’!” they yell in unison, exchanging a covert look.

“So sorry about that. They just turned four, think they can do whatever they want now, including wandering off to talk to strangers,” the girl explains approaching their table, throwing a quick chastising glare at her younger brothers. 

“I’m Molly, by the way. I really hope they weren’t bothering you.”

“Was not!” protests Fabian indignantly.

“We were gonna play a game!” adds Gideon.

Andromeda quickly jumps in before the twins can be ushered away, always interested in making new friends. 

“Yeah, we were! What game should we play?”

“Let’s play war!” says Fabian as he jumps up and down excitedly.

“If you catch us, then we hafta pretend we’re dead,” Gideon says, making a dramatic choking motion and coughing loudly when he accidentally chokes too hard. 

“And the last one standing, wins. Yes, we get it already,” their older sister says impatiently yet fondly. She turns to Bellatrix and asks hopefully, “Did you want to be a team? We’ll catch them faster that way.”

“Sure,” replies Bellatrix. 

The red-haired girl looks to be about her age, and she must also be the oldest in the family. At least this girl, Molly, understands the burden of having younger siblings who never listen to anything she says. Molly must also be a pure-blood, since only the important families and members of the Ministry were invited to this ball. The red curls on the girl's permed head are almost as riotous as Bellatrix’s black ones. 

An hour later finds Molly Prewett and Bellatrix Black arm in arm, giggling madly as they chase Gideon, Fabian, and Andromeda across the ballroom floor. Narcissa, opting not to participate in their games because “Mother said I shouldn’t ruin my dress,” calls from the sidelines whenever Molly or Bellatrix pass her, directing them towards their hiding younger siblings and assisting with their dramatic demise.

Two years later finds Molly and Bellatrix arm in arm, strolling through Diagon Alley on their way to the apothecary. They gesture excitedly at the list of potions ingredients for their first year at Hogwarts. 

After Bellatrix’s mother’s icy reception to Molly because of her blood-traitor parents, she had gradually accepted their friendship with a “Maybe you can influence the Prewett girl back onto the right track, but she’s not setting foot in this house.” Now their friendship is stronger than ever, as they meander down the stone street. 

When Molly’s parents had dropped her and the twins off at the Leaky Cauldron, Mother had quickly disappeared with Narcissa to get a new cloak. Father had then wandered into Flourish and Blotts with a vague “Make sure you don’t buy too much” called back to them, even as his eyes were already scanning the rows of books. Andromeda and the twins had gotten distracted by the limited edition snitches zipping around the window of the quidditch store. 

Bellatrix and Molly scuttle sideways through the door of Slug and Jiggers Apothecary, refusing to unlink arms. Bellatrix clutches her friend's lightly tanned arm in her own paler one as they bump clumsily into the frame and stumble inside. This causes them to giggle loudly and earn a harsh glare from the store clerk.

Finally moving apart, they roam about the shop and take in its rows and rows of shelves lined with potions ingredients.

“Em, come look at these jars!” Bellatrix points eagerly at a row of glass jars filled with foul-smelling liquids. “I think there’s eyeballs in one of them!”

“Eww, that’s disgusting,” says Molly, coming up to stand beside her.

“Yeah, disgusting AND slimy,” she joyfully states. 

“Only you, Bee, would be that excited about floating body parts.” Molly sticks her tongue out teasingly.

“Well, I think they’re more interesting than those plants you’re always looking at,” Bellatrix sniffs.

“If I’m going to have a massive garden when I’m older, I need to know what plants to grow in it.”

“Well, I think they’re boring.”

Molly rolls her eyes at her friend. “And I think floating body parts are weird. But, don’t worry. No matter how weird you are, I’ll always be right there with you.”

“Even if we aren’t sorted into the same house? I know I’m going to be in Slytherin and everyone in your family has been in Gryffindor for _ages,_ ” Bellatrix pouts.

“Yes, even then we’ll still be friends,” Molly assures her. Bellatrix turns away and secretly smiles. She wanders over to the next shelf, still grinning.

“Em, come look! I think I found the bat wings!” 

Molly walks towards her, a fond smile on her face.

~~~

“Mols, are you coming?” 

Molly walks away from her, a hurt frown on her face. 

“Yes, I’m coming!” she calls to a girl with dark brown skin and wavy chestnut hair in Ravenclaw blue robes. Molly hurries away, glancing back at Bellatrix in the corridor with confused pleading eyes, her bright red hair contrasting magnificently with her scarlet Gryffindor robes.

“Em, if you just think about it…” Bellatrix says later, plopping down in her seat next to Molly and continuing their conversation from the hallway. They’re in the fifth year Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. OWL exams are approaching at the end of term, so the professors are working them harder and harder.

“You’re a pure-blood. You can’t be friends with people like her.”

“Yes I can,” Molly says stubbornly, setting her jaw. Bellatrix prepares herself for one of Molly’s tempers. She’s seen her going off on her younger brothers when they tried to sneak out and scale the tree in the yard. One of them had fallen and broken their leg; Molly had been livid that they would be so careless, worried about their safety. 

She is aware that Molly talks to other half-blood and Muggle-born students all the time, of course. What, with being in Gryffindor and all, but Molly has never interacted with them in front of her, choosing to use _discretion,_ as her Mother would say. _What makes this girl with wavy chestnut hair so different? Why her?_

Molly slams her book open on the desk. 

“What makes Dorcas so different from us!? You think she’s stupid just because she’s Muggle-born? She’s the top of our year!”

“It doesn’t matter. You still can’t be friends with her,” Bellatrix says with finality. 

Molly looks at her, really looks at her, as if seeing for the first time who Bellatrix truly is. Not just Bee, her best friend of seven years who came to comfort her in the owlery after running away from the boggart in third year and who ruthlessly hexes anyone who dares to bully Molly for her short height. She sees Bellatrix Black, heir to one of the most wealthy and influential pure-blood families in the Wizarding World. She sees Bella, eldest daughter and devoted sister, hopelessly trying to make her family proud, while arguing constantly with her mother, and being harshly ignored by her father. 

“I ran into Dorcas during holiday in Muggle London,” Molly says calmer. “I know you won’t think it’s as interesting as meeting the handsome stranger in your house last summer, but I never really talked to her before. She always seemed too intimidating in class. But then, when I ran into her outside of school, she was really very nice. Even introduced me to her parents; they’re both professors at a Muggle university. No wonder she’s so smart. Liking school must run in her family."

She turns in her seat to look at her best friend imploringly and continues, "I think you’d really like her too if you just tried talking to her.”

_Really like her too,_ flashes in Bellatrix’s mind. _Like her too._ She feels a surge of anger pulse through her.

“See,” the voice in her mind says, “she already likes her new friend more than you. She chose her because you’re weak.” The anger grows, settling into a low prickling simmer just under her scalp.

“No, I wouldn’t,” Bellatrix finally replies, icily. “If you want to continue being friends with her, we can’t be friends anymore.”

Molly starts to sputter in protest, but is cut off by the professor announcing the day’s lesson on the Reductor Curse. She doesn’t speak again until the class is separated into pairs to practice casting on conjured chairs. 

By this point, Molly is seething.

“You’re being ridiculous. I can be friends with both of you.” They move to stand in front of the chair.

“No, you can’t.” Bellatrix casts _reducto._ The chair barely flinches; she must not have even damaged it. She steps aside for Molly’s turn.

“Yes, I _can._ ” Molly waves her wand and recites the spell. A spiderline crack appears along the back of the chair.

“No, I was your friend first, and I say you _can’t._ ” Bellatrix aggressively casts the spell. An arm falls off of the chair and the small crack turns into a large gaping cavern. Either she’ll need to practice putting a lot more energy into this spell, or this chair is ungodly sturdy.

“YOU CAN’T CONTROL MY FRIENDS!” Molly suddenly screams at her, face red, eyes bulging. 

Her not yet uttered curse goes wild, a blinding blue light flashes from her wand. The spell blasts recklessly through the chair, leaving rough black scorch marks in the wall behind it. The chair begins to topple backwards, but before it can hit the ground, it disintegrates explosively into a pile of ash. 

Bellatrix can feel her body warm with the lingering heat of Molly’s spell. She looks over at her friend, chest heaving, her face still flushed with anger. Bellatrix feels her body warm further and blood rushing towards her cheeks. 

“Magnificent, Miss Prewett!” the professor exclaims approaching them and the destroyed chair. “And nonverbal! Is that correct? I didn’t hear you say the incantation.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” Molly barely manages to reply, her voice stiff with controlled tension.

“Excellent, excellent. Ten points to Gryffindor for marvelous execution of the Reductor Curse. Class dismissed.” The professor turns away, already focused on banishing the remaining chairs from the day’s lesson.

Molly immediately grabs her bag and bolts towards the door, leaving a flushed Bellatrix gaping after her.

Weeks later, when Bellatrix comes upon a girl with wavy chestnut hair bending over her youngest sister fallen on the ground, she doesn’t hesitate to viciously curse the girl until she can’t see out of her swollen face. Bellatrix doesn’t watch when Molly, glaring daggers into her back, carefully places an arm around the girl's waist and guides her to the hospital wing.

~~~

Rodolphus mutters incoherently and turns over in his sleep. Bellatrix lays awake beside him. 

The Dark Lord is displeased; she’s disappointed him. 

She had failed to follow his direct orders earlier. “Kill any bystanders,” he had instructed, looking around the table of his loyal followers before dismissing them for their mission.

Just after dinner they emerge in an affluent Muggle neighbourhood in the London suburbs. Bellatrix saunters ahead of the group, with Rodolphus following closely behind. She casts _incendio_ as she walks, leaving a trail of flames and burning houses in her wake. The first 2 catch fire instantly, alighting the cool night in searing heat. The next 3 pierce the darkness until it is almost as bright as the day. She moves onto the next 2 houses; the street starts to fill with a suffocating smoky grey. 

This is her favorite part: the heat, the destruction, the power. To watch as someone's livelihood slowly, oh ever so achingly slowly, smolders into nothing more than a pile of ash. 

She doesn’t actually give a toss about the people inside. If they die, so be it; if they escape, well, the other Death Eaters will catch them soon enough. She just wants to watch them burn. She’d watch the whole world burn, if she could. Watch serenely from the sidelines, and then maybe go for ice cream afterwards.

This is a point of contention with the Dark Lord since she started going on missions a couple years ago. She’s undeniably killed before, either by accidentally or purposely setting them aflame, but her purpose has always been to lose herself in the heat and the scarlet glow. Simple killing is distasteful… pointlessly nausea inducing, using the Killing Curse to take the light out of someone’s eyes; she still has yet to successfully cast it. She’s only managed to remain within the Dark Lord’s trusted ranks because of her uncanny ability of exploiting people’s weaknesses and her relish for strategic planning. 

However, she’s more devoted than ever to the Dark Lord and knows she must overcome this challenge.

A woman runs out in front of her, from a nearby house up ahead not yet set aflame. The familiar middle-aged Muggle woman has dark brown skin and smart-looking glasses. She was clearly drawn outside by the commotion of the neighbouring houses, possibly wanting to help. 

Her mistake. 

The woman notices her standing there in her Death Eater robes.

Now is as good a time as ever to try the Killing Curse again. 

“Avada Kedavra,” she says stiffly, aiming her wand of dragon heartstring core at the woman. The tip sparks with leftover embers, but remains undoubtedly un-green. The woman starts to back away, not understanding the intention of Bellatrix’s spell, but afraid all the same.

Bellatrix tries again. 

“Avada Kedavra,” she says more forcefully, giving her wand an extra sweep at the end for emphasis, nausea growing in the pit of her stomach. Nothing. Her hands start to tremble when the woman full-on dashes towards the nearby house. 

“Avada Kedavra!” Bellatrix tries for the third time, frustrated at her incompetence. A beam of green light tentatively leaps from her wand and hits the sprinting Muggle woman cleanly in the back. She falls to the ground with a faint thud. 

A devouring blackness descends on Bellatrix’s wand, chilling her arm and reaching into her soul. Her stomach turns uncomfortably.

Bellatrix is baffled. Why would the spell work now and not previously when the Dark Lord had asked her? One needs to mean it for the spell to work, and she’s never meant it before. Did she especially want to take this Muggle’s life, or did she only want her to die because she was extremely frustrated today? It doesn’t matter, she supposes. 

_Dead is dead,_ she thinks, as she unnervingly looks at the unmoving body on the ground.

An anguished “Noooo!” rings in the crisp evening air. 

Dorcas Meadowes, in casual Muggle clothing, her wavy chestnut hair framing her head like a halo, stands in the doorway to the house. Her horrified eyes look between Bellatrix’s outstretched wand and the dead body of her mother lying on the cobbled path.

“Do it,” the voice in her head says. 

“Kill her.”

She hesitates. She can’t. Can’t turn her walnut wand on the girl with wavy chestnut hair. Can’t even mutter a Stunning Spell as the girl spins on her heel and disappears back into the house. Rodolphus is the only one who notices his wife’s hesitation, and chases after the girl into the house instead. Bellatrix can only stare into the blank eyes of the Muggle professor on the front walk.

“She’s gone,” Rodolphus reports, reappearing outside. “Grabbed her Muggle father and Flooed away. Probably went to contact the Ministry; the Aurors will be here any minute.”

“Didn’t know you could connect the Floo Network in a Muggle neighbourhood,” Rabastan, her brother-in-law, replies.

The Dark Lord is most definitely not pleased. 

His punishment is relentless; his Cruciatus Curse causing her vision to white out and the tendons in her body to scream. When she is unsure when one curse ends and the next starts, suddenly, there is only stillness.

She shakily raises herself to kneel in front of her master. The Dark Lord pets her head soothingly.

“You did well, Bella,” he says, commenting on her first successful use of the Killing Curse. 

She feels a flutter of pride. 

“Yet you still have much to learn.”

“Yes, my Lord,” she easily agrees, thankful that he is still willing to be her teacher.

It’s not until she is moments from Disapparating away that the Dark Lord speaks to her again, referring to her earlier failure. 

“You WILL finish this later,” he says to her, his deep crimson eyes narrowed into snake-like slits.

“Yes, my Lord” she eagerly promises, before returning home with a curious Rodolphus.

That night she thinks about the girl with wavy chestnut hair staring at her with horrified eyes. She sees the girl in blue robes calling to a short girl with curly red hair in red robes. Memories she has not dared to think about in the couple years since leaving Hogwarts. She watches as the pair walk away from her down the long hallway. 

She remembers the angry set of the red-haired girl’s jaw, her keen gaze, the flash of a wand, the explosion of heat. She remembers scorch marks on the wall and a pile of ashes on the floor.

She soundlessly slips a hand under the sheets.

If that night she lays awake thinking about red hair, a flushed freckled face, and a blinding flash of blue light before drifting off into a blissful sleep, no one is any the wiser. Not even her husband, who remains snoring softly beside her.

~~~

“Kill,” the voice says, when the Dark Lord brings in a middle-aged Muggle man with dark brown skin and wavy chestnut hair. She does. Arm shaking, voice unsteady as she casts the spell.

“Kill,” the voice says, when she is staking out the Ministry and the informant turned traitor, Rowle’s short-lived secretary fling, walks past her hiding place. She does. Grimacing, arm steady, as she casts the spell.

“Kill,” the voice says, when the Dark Lord tasks her with training the new recruits and hands her a house elf who tried to run away from the pure-blood family he was serving. She does. Glancing over to see her cousin Regulus’s queasy expression. Smiling slightly, as she casts the spell.

“Kill,” the voice says, when she is raiding an Order member’s house and comes across the McKinnon’s sleeping peacefully in their beds. She does. Smiling maliciously, as she casts the spell.

“Kill,” the voice says, when she is facing Gideon and Fabian Prewett in front of the wrecked remains of an Order hideout in the middle of a desolate forest.

“Been a long time, Bee,” says Fabian.

“Nearly twelve years,” says Gideon.

“Almost thought—” 

“—you had forgotten—”

“—about us,” they say together.

“Never,” responds Bellatrix, staring at their riotous red hair that she hasn’t seen in over a decade since finishing school. 

“Wanna play a game?” Gideon asks.

“The last one standing—” Fabian begins to say.

“—wins,” Bellatrix finishes for him. “I remember.”

And so, they play. 

Spells flying, red hair singeing, black hair whirling.

Her left forearm burns; the Dark Lord is calling her. She turns to her nearest fellow Death Eater. _Dolohov?_ It’s so bloody hard to tell the difference. 

“Finish them,” she tells him. He nods under his mask. 

She places a white hand over the gleaming black of the Dark Mark and Disapparates. 

She appears next to the Dark Lord in an empty field, and squints into the golden light of a brilliant sunset. The Dark Lord is standing calmly, in flowing black robes, above a bloody figure curled on the ground. 

“It was a trap,” he starts to say, “intended to lure me out while the rest of my loyal followers were occupied elsewhere.” She watches him with rapt attention.

“Fortunately, I discovered the plan before any harm was done,” he continues, pacing in front of the hunched figure. “And now, I’ve found the mastermind behind this failed plan.” 

He addresses the bloody body on the ground. “You thought you were so clever, didn't you? Distracting me so thoroughly.” He prods the figure sharply in the rib, eliciting a pained moan in response. 

He stops in front of Bellatrix, his white skull-like face appraising her. 

“What say you, Bella? What do you think of our clever creator?”

She finally turns to look at the figure on the ground. Blood spattered robes barely cover deep scratches on their arms and legs, but their dark brown skin and wavy chestnut hair are instantly recognizable. 

“Finish this,” the Dark Lord commands coldly, his bright scarlet eyes narrowed into snake-like slits. 

“Kill,” the voice says, the same as it did ten years ago as she hesitated in a rich Muggle neighbourhood. 

“Kill her.”

This time, Bellatrix doesn’t hesitate to turn her unyielding walnut wand on the girl with wavy chestnut hair. 

“Avada Kedavra!” she shouts with manic pleasure, watching as the green light illuminates Dorcas Meadowes in the golden grass. They leave the lifeless body in the empty field, with the smoke of the Dark Mark floating above it. 

The sun sets radiantly on the horizon.

~~~

Bellatrix beams. _It’s truly beautiful,_ she thinks, _radiant,_ as she looks out onto the Hogwarts grounds.

The air crackles around her with a mesmerizing array of spells. They merge, collide, fall in a rapturous rainbow of light. She hums as she weaves her way around statues and stone, students and their professors, the fallen and the fighting.

She knows her pink-haired niece is one of the fallen; she is happily responsible for that. She wonders who is left of the fighting.

There, on the breeze, she spots the girl. Her red hair flowing around her like a lion’s mane: fierce, strong, and so, so alive.

She is nine again, giggling madly arm in arm with a curly red-haired girl at a Ministry gala. She is at Hogwarts, watching the red-haired girl walk away from her in the long hallway. She is hesitating in a Muggle neighbourhood, unable to mutter the curse she so desperately needs, because she can’t disappoint the red-haired girl. She is in bed next to her husband, thinking about fiery red hair, lightly tanned skin, and kind crinkling eyes.

She is standing at the edge of the Great Hall, dead bodies littered around her, staring at the red-haired girl before her.

“Kill,” the voice says, “she is the cause of all your problems.” 

She’s long ago accepted the voice in her head, and so she listens.

Bellatrix raises her wand and fires off a curse. A curse to kill.

The girl’s blonde-haired friend launches forward and grabs the girl, pulling her out of the way. Her other bushy-haired friend shoots off an Impediment Jinx from a walnut wand in retaliation. Another one of Potter’s infuriating minions, another annoyance to eliminate. Bellatrix blocks the spell easily with a flick of her wand. 

They duel. 

Three against one, but Bellatrix is winning. She knows. She cackles gleefully.

The girl’s red hair is long and straight. It’s wrong. Bellatrix hates it, wants to get rid of it. 

She sends her next curse hurtling towards the girl’s head.

“NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!”

Molly throws off her cloak as she runs, freeing her arms. 

Bellatrix spins on the spot, roaring with laughter at the sight of her new challenger. 

“How are you, Em?” she taunts, a wicked smile on her waxen face. 

They duel. 

Jets of light fly from both wands, and the floor around the witches’ feet becomes hot and cracked. Bellatrix laughs, enthralled, at Molly’s glowing spells flying mere inches from her. She hasn’t felt this alive in years. 

She watches, a gloating smile still on her face, as a blinding blue light soars beneath her outstretched arm, aiming squarely at her chest.

It aims directly for her heart.

“Kill or be killed,” the voice whispers.

_And so Death took the first sister for her own._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That concludes Part 1! With Bellatrix's descent into madness and blinding ruthlessness. I, personally, like the idea that she and Molly were friends at Hogwarts, or at least knew each other considering they’re such similar ages.


	5. Andromeda & Ted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cissy doesn’t like Andy’s new boo. What’s a girl to do?

_ Here she took out the stone that had the power to recall the dead, and turned it thrice in her hand. _

Here Andromeda takes from her left pocket an unassuming stone, and turns it over in her hand. 

Silently closing the door to the empty classroom behind her, she leans back against it with a heavy sigh, eyes closed, not bothering to turn the light on in the moonlit room. She slowly opens her eyes and stares determinedly at her open palm.  _ It looks like the moon, _ she thinks. The round stone softly glows in the limited light, various colours attempting and failing to reveal themselves on its smooth surface. 

This one small white stone, meticulously concealed on her person since yesterday evening, will wreak havoc on her relatively calm life and leave irreversible consequences. 

She remembers the previous night in this very room. Ted, her Ted, nervously getting down on one knee. 

He tilts his head up, resolutely looking directly into her stunned face. He takes her left hand in both of his; his rough larger hands are warm, just like his gaze whenever he looks at her.

“Dromeda, I know I’m not going about this the traditional way… but I frankly don’t give a shite what your parents think, so I didn’t bother asking them.”

She frowns slightly at that and moves to pull her hand away. Ted Tonks visibly falters before taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders. His grip tightens on her hand in his. Voice purposely steady, he continues.

“I love you, so much. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you, no matter what anyone else says. Even if your parents think I will never be good enough for you. Even if your sister continues to hex me every time she sees me because she thinks I’m the scum of the earth. Even if your other sister coldly ignores me then steals my letters to you over the summer hoping that you’d forget about me. I know how important your family is to you and I realize that they will never approve of me because I’m Muggle-born, but I still need to take this chance.”

Andromeda, panicking, can only stare wide-eyed as Ted reaches into his cloak and takes out a plain black jewelry box. He must have been pacing the grounds before this if he’s wearing his cloak right now. She catches a glimpse of a sultry copper orange rose peeking out of his cloak pocket. 

He opens the velvety jewelry box to reveal a beautifully simple ring: a thin silver band with a small opal glinting up at her.

“Dromeda,” he says again, while looking up at her with hope in his eyes. 

“You are the absolute best part of coming to Hogwarts. I cannot imagine my life without you in it. After we graduate I want us to be together, really together. I want to kiss you everyday, introduce you to my parents, buy a house together... I don’t want to hide anymore.” He pauses, willing himself to say the final words. 

“Will you marry me?”

Silence.

A thick oppressive silence.

It seems the entire castle is staying quiet just for this moment. 

She can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t even move.  _ What is happening? This wasn’t supposed to happen. _ Her midnight dates with Ted were supposed to be a bit of fun, secretly rebelling against her strict conservative parents while satisfying her curiosity about the cute Hufflepuff boy with the kind eyes who helped her with Charms homework. Ted wasn’t supposed to love her; she wasn’t supposed to love him back. 

Ted, getting even more anxious in the silence, babbles on, slurring his words.

“I know this must seem sudden, but I’ve felt this way for a while now. We don’t have to rush. It can be this summer, next year, or five years from now...” 

Finally regaining the ability to move, she abruptly pulls away. Blinking rapidly to clear her head, she musters all the stoic calm of her father, the infallible and unmoving head of House Black. 

“You need to stop this, right now,” Andromeda says to him, only a slight quiver in her voice giving her away. 

“You and I both knew when we started that there was no future for us. Why are you doing this?” 

She can barely finish speaking before turning away to hide her frustration, her longing. It doesn’t matter if she loves Ted; it doesn’t matter at all. She is a Black and she will have a pure-blood husband and have pure-blood children who will have pure-blood grandchildren. There is no other option. She may not always agree with her family’s rules, but she loves her family, more than anything. She will not disappoint them.

“Because... I needed you to know,” Ted replies slowly, cautiously. He can tell that she is unravelling, so close to the edge, barely hanging on. So close to what, though? To admitting that this ever present connection between them is more than a shallow fling or to turning away and running out of this room and out of his life for good?

He rises from the floor, ring still in his hands, glaring ostentatiously at her when moments before it seemed so modestly simple. 

He takes her limp hand, presses the soft jewelry box into it. She’s still not looking at him, can’t stand the sight of him. Everything she wants, but can never have. 

“Think about it, please,” he begs before chastely kissing her cheek, turning away and walking out the classroom door. She sees a fleeting flash of the copper orange rose lying forgotten in his pocket. 

A knock on the classroom door startles her from her thoughts: 2 quick taps, a precise 3 second pause, then 2 more taps. It was the knock they used as kids, sneaking into each other's rooms when they thought their parents were asleep. 

She forces her face into a blank mask. She may not be the well-bred prodigy her parents had envisioned, but her extensive etiquette lessons starting at age four taught her at least one thing: how to seem unbothered when everything's falling apart around you. 

Stepping away from the door, she opens it to reveal her sixteen year old sister, primly dressed even after curfew, shockingly blonde hair neatly braided half-up in a style taken directly from the newest edition of  _ Witch Weekly. _ She should know; she’s the one that got her little sister the magazine subscription last Christmas after all. 

“Cissy,” she says, emotionless. She’s the one that called her here; she needs to at least appear that she has things under control. Though with her chalky complexion and hunched shoulders, it may be a futile effort.

“Andy,” her younger sister replies just as coolly, smoothly gliding into the empty moonlit room, as only the purely aristocratic can do. 

A long pause. Neither wants to be the one to speak first. They aren’t exactly on bad terms, neither are they on good terms. After Bellatrix graduated three years earlier and almost immediately married the insufferably rich and unbearably vile Rodolphus Lestrange, their unbreakable sister dynamic seemed just that, breakable. 

Bellatrix started writing less and less, not wanting to interact with “you silly school children, caring about your trivial assignments. I have much more important things to do than keeping up with your boring lives.” 

“I need your advice,” she says to her younger sister. 

It’s risky revealing her hand right away, not very Slytherin of her, but she’d never been the cunning type of Slytherin. Maybe the ambitious sort, or at least when she wanted to be. And this is her little sister, who understands her as much as anyone could.

“It must be important if you called me out here in the middle of the night. We barely acknowledge each other in the hallways and you suddenly want a private chat.” Narcissa gracefully inclines her head, posture ram-rod straight, pale hands delicately laced in front of her, ever the elegant pure-blood.

Narcissa stares impassively, except for the slight twitch of her fingers that gives away her curiosity, her eagerness. Andromeda is glad to note that she can still read her sister like when they were younger and Narcissa would cling to her during a thunderstorm. 

“Are you scared?” Andromeda would ask as she looked on at her sister’s nervous frame shadowing the doorway to her bedroom.

“No, of course not,” five year old Narcissa would reply, her fingers twitching, revealing how she was more affected than she wanted to admit. “I just wanted to talk to you,” she would say as she climbed into Andromeda’s bed. 

Bellatrix would always arrive, not five minutes later, complaining about how cold her room was, especially during thunderstorms. “Do you think my room’s cursed?” she’d ask while also climbing into Andromeda’s warm bed and winding her arms around both sisters. 

“Maybe... We should ask Mother and Father in the morning,” she would reply with Narcissa agreeing vigorously beside her. They never did ask. They all knew Bellatrix would have joined them regardless, always wanting to make sure that her two younger sisters were okay.

Later, when Bellatrix had left for Hogwarts and Narcissa would silently crawl into Andromeda’s bed, they still left an open space, as if waiting for their eldest sister to return home. 

But Narcissa no longer crawls into her bed during thunderstorms and Bellatrix is never coming back, not in the way that Andromeda really needs. She still sees her older sister over the holidays, but it’s not the same. After every conversation, Andromeda wonders when they started hiding more than they can share, when they stopped trusting each other. 

She stares at the youngest Black sister now, wondering if this will be one of the last times she talks to her, without animosity or feelings of betrayal. 

“Ted proposed to me last night,” she states bluntly, all caution thrown out the window. Either Narcissa will pause, listen to her, and offer real advice or she will sneer, walk away, and pretend this conversation never happened. It all depends on how much their relationship has already deteriorated. 

To her relief, her sister does pause, briefly, but it’s a pause nonetheless. Her pale face falters, flashing through surprise, then anger, and finally settling on disappointment before responding. 

“I assume you accepted, and now you want my advice on the best way to tell the rest of the family.” She does sneer a bit at the end, the word  _ family _ twisting, like it’s a concept Andromeda couldn’t possibly understand.

Given the circumstances, it’s a valid assumption, but she’s still stupidly hurt that Narcissa doesn’t even think she would discuss this with her first, such a life-altering decision. 

She never told Ted what her family is really like. They wouldn’t just disapprove of their relationship; they would do everything in their power to stop them, possibly even going so far as disappearing Ted. She could never tell him that. 

Narcissa is the only one who knows about Ted, about Andromeda’s sordid affair with a Muggle-born. 

It was the letters from last summer addressed to “My dearest Dromeda” and signed “Love, Your Ted” that gave it away. She told him not to write, but Ted is a stubborn bastard, and she was secretly pleased when he ignored her pleas. The little jolt her heart made whenever she received a new letter told her exactly how much she liked it. 

Of course, Narcissa found them and promptly destroyed them. 

In the biggest row they’d had in years, Andromeda found herself crying amidst a pile of irreparably burned parchment with Narcissa standing over her, angrily casting  _ incendio _ on any papers in sight, letter of not. 

“You need to stop this, right now,” Narcissa says, her wand shaking in her hands. The same words that Andromeda will use not even a year later when Ted is kneeling in front of her, heart laid bare. 

“You can’t do this to yourself. You can’t do this to me, to our family.” Andromeda knows she’s right. Her unlikely relationship with Ted has no future, not that it ever did. She can’t throw away her family’s legacy, their trust, for some insignificant boy she briefly fancies. 

She picks up her own wand and burns the rest of the letters. It’s a small mercy that both Master and Missus Black were out fawning over Bellatrix and her new husband that particular summer day. 

Neither Narcissa nor Andromeda mention it for the rest of the summer holidays. When term starts again, Andromeda is wary about starting her seventh and final year. Narcissa doesn’t outwardly treat her any differently, but no longer seeks her out. She’s determined to ignore Ted and stop these insidious feelings inside her. 

But old habits die hard… It’s already May by the time she realizes it’s impossible to ignore these unrelenting emotions and she was a fool to think otherwise, as she looks into the disappointed face of her younger sister. 

Trying not to sound offended by her sister’s response, she says, “Don’t be ridiculous. I haven’t made a decision yet. That’s why I’m asking for your advice.” She relaxes her stance, hoping to appear more open to conversation and stop Narcissa being on the defensive. 

“And why would you take my advice now? You certainly didn’t before.” Her sister is outright sneering now, no more hiding behind a polite facade.

Andromeda buries her face in her hands, no longer trying to appear composed now that she knows Narcissa will at least stay to listen. 

“I tried, I really did, but things got out of my control and it’s too late to change now… He loves me, and I love him. I don’t know what to do… Cissy, what do I do?” She still hasn’t looked up, afraid to see her sister’s response to her desperate pleading. 

As such, she misses Narcissa’s momentary look of absolute devastation, before schooling her expression into one of polite interest. Without malice she says, “I don’t see why you need my advice as it’s ultimately your decision.” 

Andromeda cautiously peaks through her fingers still covering her face. Noting that Narcissa is no longer sneering, but merely looking at her curiously. She raises her head and gratefully looks at her sister full on. 

Narcissa continues, “I only have one question to ask you then.” She looks suddenly nervous, fingers reaching up to mess with her meticulously done hair. 

Andromeda nods once, signalling that she’s intently listening to whatever comes next.

“Which one can you live without, him or us?”

It is not until hours later under the full moon, as Andromeda lays in her bed in the Slytherin seventh year dormitory fiddling with the stone, that the answer comes to her. 

She whispers it into the dark, at once both aggressively relieved that she has made her decision and heart-wrenchingly miserable thinking about the inevitable separation to come. 

~~~

“Mind if I sit here?”

A cute Hufflepuff boy stands by her table in the library, gesturing to the empty chair across from her. She’s seen him in her sixth year Charms class; he never raises his hand, but always answers correctly when the professor calls on him. 

Andromeda quickly scans the library.  _ Damn, there really aren’t any open seats left. _ She could tell him to bugger off, she supposes, but she doesn’t want to be seen as  _ that type _ of Slytherin, the type who refuses to talk to half their classmates just because they’re related to Muggles, the type like her older sister. 

She briefly dips her head in acquiescence and returns her attention to her essay on cleaning spells. There’s SO many books to read through. This essay is going to take her at least the rest of the day to finish.

Her and the boy sit in amicable silence, each studiously ignoring the other while they slog through hours and hours of homework. 

“Ugh, fuck it all,” Andromeda groans, roughly closing the thick tomb in front of her, and bringing her hands up to rub her tired eyes. A low chuckle comes from across the table. She stiffens and blinks her eyes open in surprise. She had completely forgotten about the boy sitting across from her, so focused on finishing her essay, not that that seems likely anytime soon.

“Anything I can help with?” the boy asks, both genuinely concerned and faintly amused by her slip of the tongue. She considers him, as she looks over into his friendly face. 

“It’s just that… it would go so much faster if I didn’t have to spend all this time looking through every single book about cleaning charms just to find the few paragraphs that are useful.” She finishes complaining with a huff, her frizzy auburn hair falling out of her messy bun and falling over her shoulder. A hint of her rose perfume wafts over to the boy, striking him dumb.

“I can help with that, actually,” he says. “I was doing some research a while back and found this really neat spell. It lets you search for a word or phrase and the book will open directly to every page that has the word on it. I can show you if you’d like?” he finishes hopefully.

She leans forward intrigued. The boy’s ears flush pink, but she doesn’t notice.  _ Where has this spell been all her life? _ This would have saved her so many hours of slaving away at the library. She always did prefer practical application to written work. She signals for him to demonstrate the spell.

“Ok so, it’s really just a variation on the Revealing Charm, but modified to find and reveal specific words. For example, if you wanted to find a passage about Scouring Charms, you would wave your wand like this...” 

The boy makes a twisting then a looping motion with his wand. “Verbum revelio, Scouring Charms,” he says at the same time that he moves his wand. In the next instant, her book flips open and waits on the table in front of her with several pages suspended above it, as if being held open by multiple invisible hands.

“Wow, let me try!” She eagerly turns to the enormous stack of books waiting for her perusal at the end of the table. 

“Verbum revelio, Scouring Charms,” she says waving her wand enthusiastically. Every book in the immense stack snaps open at once. They battle for an open space on the table. Some drop to the hard ground with a deafening thud; the cranky librarian shushes them. One dives directly into her lap, its pages fluttering at her, coaxing her to read it first. 

The boy is giving her an astonished look that is both sheepish and impressed. 

“Um yeah, that can happen sometimes when you aren’t focusing hard enough on one book. The first time I tried the spell, I caused an entire shelf of books to flap away. I also think it’s interesting that it works on invisible ink as well and the spell won’t wear off until the castor either…” he trails off when she doesn’t look up from the book in her lap.

She belatedly realizes his rambling and looks up with a delighted smile.

“It’s brilliant!” she assures him happily.

Ted Tonks smiles at her, dimples appearing on his beige cheeks at the corners of his soft pink lips. His sandy blonde hair falls messily into his warm hazel eyes. Andromeda desperately wants to reach over and ruffle it, but she restrains herself. 

_ Later, _ she thinks, startling herself with the thought. These are dangerous thoughts to have about a Muggle-born boy in her charms class. 

She decides, right then, to halt these enticing images and returns to her essay. She finishes her essay on cleaning spells within the hour.

The next day when the boy approaches her and gestures to the empty chair again, she merely dips her head in acquiescence, smiling secretly to herself, and clears her books from his side of the table in response.

~~~

By mid-summer after finishing Hogwarts, Andromeda is sneaking out of the Black family mansion, luggage in tow. Narcissa watches her leave despondently from the stair landing, not intervening, just watching. Bellatrix is long gone working on some mission for a self-proclaimed up-and-coming dark lord. 

Their parents are fast asleep in the master bedroom. In the morning, they will wake to a tearful letter explaining the abrupt disappearance of one of their beloved children. Frequent shrieks of “It’s your fault our daughter turned into a blood-traitor!” and some more colourful variations will be heard throughout the house, but they will not go after her. 

Some say their yelling will be heard all the way from a certain sitting room in a dreary house at 12 Grimmauld Place where Andromeda Black will soon be burned off the family tree.

Andromeda glances back one last time and spots Narcissa watching her from the top of the stairs. The middle Black sister gives the youngest Black sister one last nod before rushing out the door. 

Narcissa doesn’t nod back; there is no longer a middle Black sister for her to nod to. 

She continues to stare at the closed front door until her eyelids begin to droop with either fatigue or tears. Narcissa removes her braid, and goes and climbs into Andromeda’s bed one last time, comforted by the lingering smell on the sheets. 

As soon as her head touches the pillow, she’s bothered by a soft crinkling sound. Reaching under the pillow, she finds a plain envelope with “Dearest Cissy,” elegantly written on the front. Her immediate thought is to tear it into so many pieces, even a  _ reparo _ wouldn’t be able to fix it. She doesn’t want to read it, doesn’t want to see Andromeda explaining why she’s abandoning her own family, abandoning her. 

But she does read it. 

It says exactly what she thought it would, pages and pages of Andromeda begging for her forgiveness, pleading with her that things don’t have to change between them; they can still be sisters. 

_ The arrogance of love, _ she thinks. That Andromeda can presume nothing will change between them, when overnight she’s the one who broke them. 

Narcissa throws the letter violently on the ground, disgusted, and falls asleep with the smell of Andromeda surrounding her. 

When the house elves come to clean early the next morning, the bed is empty, a discarded letter lies haphazardly next to it. If they were to look closely, they would notice that the last page of the letter is missing. 

The page of the letter containing six terrifying words, whispered in the dead of night, that changed everything.

“I can not live without him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Verbum revelio (reveal words) spell is my own mismash creation. If there is already a spell with that purpose, my bad; I couldn’t find it anywhere.


End file.
